Summers' Tenure Echoes Experience Of Presidents Past

To the editors:



Re: “The Economist,” column, Feb. 22.

It is ironic that President Lawrence Summers, touted initially as a groundbreaking Harvard president like Charles W. Eliot, class of 1853, apparently pursued a presidential style of leadership quite reminiscent of President A. Lawrence Lowell’s handling of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Once Lowell, class of 1877 and president from 1909 to 1933, decided on a course of action, he opposed further discussion or hesitation. According to Eliot, president from 1869 to 1909, Lowell was “resolute,” even tactless, in pursuing what he believed to be the truth, yet “ingenious, though abrupt, in justifying those decisions.” In contrast, Eliot, who had held the chair at the meetings of all faculties, usually listened when they voiced their concerns and tolerated their digressions. Eliot observed: “The Faculty is a ruminating animal, chewing a cud a long time, slowly bringing it into a digestible condition; then comes the process of assimilation which is gradual and invisible, so that bystanders do not perceive the growth and expansion of the animal.”



MARCIA G. SYNNOTT ’61

Columbia, S.C.

February 24, 2006



The writer is professor of history emerita at the University of South Carolina.